1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the testing of integrated circuits (ICs), and more particularly to developing a test program for automated semiconductor test equipment (ATE).
2. Description of Related Art
Today tester manufacturers use their own proprietary languages to develop test programs for semiconductor test systems (testers). For example, machines produced by Advantest Corporation utilize the Test Description Language (TDL), and Credence Systems offers its own Waveform Generation Language (WGL). To overcome this degree of specialization, IC and tester manufacturers tried to find a common ground by developing IEEE standard 1450, the Standard Test Interface Language (STIL). STIL, however, is a highly specialized language for defining pins, test commands, timing, etc. Moreover, a test engineer running STIL nevertheless still needs to translate STIL into the proprietary manufacturer-specific language required by the tester. Thus STIL merely serves as an intermediate language that is nonetheless highly specialized and not generally known to programmers.
Hence, it is desirable to develop a method through which test program can be written in a general purpose language. Moreover, this method should allow for easy development of test programs for an open architecture test system.